1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to a maintenance device, a fluid ejecting apparatus, and a maintenance method.
2. Related Art
In the related art, ink jet printers are widely known as a fluid ejecting apparatus configured to eject fluid onto a medium. The ink jet printers are configured to perform a printing process onto the medium by ejecting ink (fluid) from nozzles formed on a fluid ejecting head.
Among the ink jet printers configured as described above, there is a printer including a cap member configured to cover the nozzles for restraining ink solvent from evaporating from nozzle openings when waiting for a printing operation or when the power is OFF (for example, JP-A-2009-29113).
When covering the nozzles with the cap member as describe above, it is preferable to close the nozzle openings by bringing the cap member into tight contact with the openings to reduce the amount of air communicating with the interiors of the nozzles in terms of restraint of evaporation. However, when the cap member comes into contact with the nozzle openings, the cap member comes into contact with liquid surfaces (meniscuses) of ink formed in the interiors of the nozzles, whereby meniscuses of a concave shape may be disadvantageously destructed.
Therefore, in the printer disclosed in JP-A-2009-29113, the contact between the cap member and the liquid surfaces is restrained by reducing the pressure in the interior of an ink flow channels and recessing the liquid surfaces into the nozzles when closing the nozzle openings by the cap member.
However, when a plurality of the nozzles are formed on the fluid ejecting head, timing of recessing the liquid surfaces or the extent of recession at the time of the pressure reduction may vary. Therefore, in the nozzles in which the recession of the liquid surfaces are not sufficient, the liquid surfaces and the cap member come into contact with each other, and the meniscuses formed therein are disadvantageously destructed.